About TNW

TNW Sites

Help build a global ‘Sound Map’ with this Google Maps/mobile mashup

In an increasingly noisy world, designing buildings to be pleasing to our ears as well as our eyes is becoming more important. After all, buildings that are better at keeping out external noise and don’t suffer nasty echos will be more pleasant to be in. A new project is aiming to help make this process a lot easier.

Sound Around You, an initiative by the University of Salford, aims to crowdsource information about sound levels around the world using a simple mobile app and some desktop analysis software. The project’s website allows you to explore and listen to all uploaded recordings via a Google Maps mashup.

The mobile software is J2ME based which means it will work with most phones that aren’t the iPhone, while the desktop software is Windows only. Apple fans will have to sit tight on this one for the time being but an iPhone version is planned.

In this video the man behind the project, Charlie Mydlarz, explains how it works and why it’s an important project.